I need to do a water change on Sushi's 2 gallon tank. Overnight I killed a dozen red cherry shrimp that I was acclimating. I've determined that the high pH of my water was the cause. Now I'm paranoid to do Sushi's although he has lived just fine through water changes for the last 6 weeks! So should I just do the same thing I've been doing? I've found in all my chemistry experiments this morning that putting my tap water through a Brita filter lowers the pH. I don't know what else it may be doing though. Oddly enough, after a day of WC, all my tanks are about neutral.

I've been playing chem lab all day! Here's the post I put on Betta Fish with my findings. I was acclimating them by letting them come to room temperature, adding a little tap water (I have well water) every 10 minutes or so, then floating them in the tank to come up in temp.

[quoteI have a water problem. The reason I know this is because I got a lovely dozen red cherry shrimp yesterday. This morning they were all dead. After chatting with the seller, we narrowed it down to ph. I have been doing water experiments all day.

Here's what I've found but I don't know why. My well water straight from the tap is off the high charts! Deep purple! This is the water I've been using for water changes. I'm surprised anyone is still alive! Seachem Prime does not change it. Running it through a Brita filter DOES. The water comes out pretty close to neutral. Running it through a pack of charcoal does not. My tanks are all pretty neutral in ph a day after water changes. Immediately after, the ph is high. Right now all my tanks are good.

Any ideas as to what is in the well water that raises the ph so high and what in the Brita filter fixes it? My next task is to get a filter on my faucet that I can attach my filling hose to so I can put filtered water in the tanks at water changes.][/quote]

What's your hardness? This is more important than pH, while differences in pH can indicate differences in hardness it's the shock from differing hardness & the accompanying osmotic pressure issues that causes problems.